Almanack Contributor Lance Clark

Lance Clark is a former United Nations Ambassador with 35 years of experience in international work, focusing on emergency relief in conflicts, forcible displacements, early warning of conflicts, and peace operations and peacebuilding. This includes working in places such as Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Rwanda, Iraq, Chechnya, Georgia (former USSR), Bosnia, Kosovo, Serbia, and other countries. He has served in the United Nations, the Refugee Policy Group, Save the Children, the International Rescue Committee, and the Peace Corps. He has a BA degree in History from Johns Hopkins University and a Masters in Social Psychology from Cornell University. He and his wife Nancy now live in Hague, New York.

My father was a young high school teacher in Florida on December 7, 1941. Following Pearl Harbor, he joined the Army and made it his career, including in Army intelligence assessing future security threats.

I once asked him what he thought, on the day of the Pearl Harbor attack, were our chances of winning the war. His answer was “not good”. He was confident in 1941 that America would fight courageously, and could build a massive military force, and that our role as the arsenal of democracy could prove decisive. But the key question was whether there was enough time left? » Continue Reading.

The scale of the threats to our national and global security that climate change is creating is staggering. These are well known to America’s military and security experts. Yet the voices of these persons are not being adequately heard and acted on in Washington, even as these dangers to our country increase.

Climate change is creating a tremendous range of problems that will increasingly cause and worsen violence and conflicts. For example, droughts (like that in Syria) are multiplying the scale of conflict and migration. Water, food and grazing shortages will push tremendous numbers of people into areas controlled by others, creating and worsening conflicts in places like Darfur, in Sudan. Rising sea levels are a truly enormous threat, including through the future flooding of mega-cities on coasts around the world and the forced displacement of many millions. The melting of the Arctic icecaps is already creating international tensions with Russia over rights to underwater resources. » Continue Reading.